August 30, 2015

8 weeks ago i asked Shane Miller from the Miller Gym to help me get my bench press stronger. Since i was 8 years old one of my biggest goals was to beat my natural fathers lifetime bench press max of 275 pounds. 8 weeks ago my max bench press was 240 pounds. On Friday i maxed out and to my amazement in 8 weeks i put 45 pounds on my bench & accomplished my life long goal of maxing more on bench press than my dad ever had, setting a lifetime PR of 285 pounds.

I asked Shane to build me another bench press program to get my max above 300 pounds before my 40th birthday in late November. My first day ofthe program was today.

August 01, 2015

There's a woman I train with named Chris Galvin. She's in the Olympic weightlifting hall of fame. After winning numerous national weightlifting championships (I'm talking 11 or 12!!!!) she had to have major shoulder surgery. For must people a surgery of that type would be a career ending surgery. But she's rehabbing her shoulder and slowly increasing the amount she lifts. Yesterday i watched her doing some heavy snatches. During every repetition I'd see her her grit her teeth or grunt in pain. I'm amazed at her determination to fight through the pain and do whatever it takes to get back to a high level of competition. I wish i was half as tough as she is. It's people like her that make it so motivating to train at The Miller Gym.

I'm one week into my new weightlifting program. It's hard. Awesome, but very hard. I promised a couple of my buddies from church I'd compete in a N.A.S.A. powerlifting competition this December in Roswell New Mexico with them. So after each weightlifting training session I've been trying to do a bench program Coach Shane Miller built for me. The bench program is amazing, I was getting great results from it, but by the end of my Olympic weightlifting session I'm too tired to bench. I'm not sure if i can follow through with the powerlifting meet. i desperately want to, but I just don't know if I'll have the energy to get through both. One of my life long dreams was to beat my natural fathers max bench press PR of 275lbs. Last year i did the program Coach Miller built for me and i got up to a 272lb max. So close! But just like now the Olympic weightlifting got intense and exhausted me so i just couldn't keep doing both. I'm hoping i can push through it, but it's not looking very promising.